At LinuxTag on Saturday, a meeting of Kubuntu and KDE contributors was held in order to improve the collaboration of both projects. The aim was to to talk about the common future of both projects. Jonathan Riddell and Mark Shuttleworth from Canonical attended the meeting. Later in his keynote speech to the conference, Mark publicly committed to Kubuntu as an essential product for Canonical and showed his commitment by wearing a KDE t-shirt.

Mark Shuttleworth during his keynote at Linuxtag 2006.

Introductions

At the beginning of the meeting, Mark outlined Canonical's vision of the future of Ubuntu Linux and the role of Kubuntu and KDE therein. Canonical wants to create a free, professional economic eco-system and help to develop and transport KDE's vision of the future of the free desktop. Starting with Dapper Drake, the next release of Kubuntu to be released at the beginning of June, Canonical will ship CD sets of Kubuntu in the same manner as it did with Ubuntu in the past. Artwork of the CD sets was shown to the attendants of the meeting.

Eva Brucherseifer held a short introduction to KDE, explaining different aspects of how the community works together, challenges in the community life cycle such as finding enough new developers and improving the sustainability of KDE as a Free Software project. She also explains that KDE is working actively on extending the KDE community further to non-developers. Eva described the decision making process within KDE as being very much bazaar-like; people exchanging ideas, seeking mindshare and creating it.

The Future of Kubuntu

Mark said that Canonical has created some tools to make Free Software developer communities more scalable such as Rosetta and Malone. It is also important to help newcomers to get into the project. Ubuntu's vision includes offering multiple desktops because it is a healthy way for a sustainable future that those desktop environments should work great together. Tighter integration of Canonical's collaboration tools with e.g. KDE's bugzilla is another keypoint of the collaboration in the future.

Mark went on acknowledging that native office programs - such as KOffice - are the preferred way to go, but that the process of adopting those is not easy because of exchange of for example files with the Windows platform and because they do not work on Windows as OpenOffice.org does. Canonical is committed to making sure to connect the source code vision of a project such as KDE to a user and market centric vision of Ubuntu. They will invite a number of contributors from different parts of the KDE project to the next developers meeting in June in Paris, where the next Kubuntu release - Edgy Eft - will be sketched.

Split up Sessions

After the more general part of the discussion, the group split up to discuss issues such as human computer interaction, artwork, marketing and naturally technological issues.

Collaborations in the improvement of the technical side of things cover topics such as communication on developer level, for example discussing distribution-specific problems directly between the Kubuntu developers and packagers, but also very specific issues such as extending the Ubuntu laptop testing and any other future derivatives to ensure a high quality level of future releases of Kubuntu.

From the human computer interaction point of view, improvements in the acceptance of usability and accessibility are important to be made in the future. Creating more mindshare among artists is another challenge for the future. KDE needs more artists and must help them enter the Free Software community. Kubuntu and KDE will collaborate in trying to attract more non-coding contributors to the projects, not only for work on the human-computer interaction, but also on promotion and marketing.

There are also quite a lot of technological issues that can be solved by having more KDE people in the middle of the Ubuntu community, currently most of the Ubuntu platform developers are mostly using GNOME when developing the underlying operating system basis. In order to achieve that improved interoperation between the different desktop environments on the Ubuntu platform, Canonical will make sure that some of the people Canonical will hire in the future for working on (K)Ubuntu come from the KDE world.

I didn't skip anything, but when the big talks in Germany result in scheduling other talks in France this is what most people call 'vague'. And the part about hiring contains as much precise information as 'will hire some developers some time in the future', which is at best inconclusive and at worst meaningless.

it seems that this was in essence a relationship building event. it builds upon the efforts and successes of the kubuntu team and the growth of canonical's linux play. it's a milestone, nothing more or less. aside from relationship building, the key events that took place imho include:

announcing that kubuntu will be on shipit
mark publicly expressed that his company's support extends beyond just gnome (wearing the kde shirt on stage, talking about it with the media, etc)

not everything is about code all the time. sometimes it's about more "ephemeral" things like mechanisms of distribution ....

this is the most important thing announced, I belive.
There is a LOT of people I know that have windows on their machines, but use sometimes a ubuntu live-cd to play with linux, but today this means they play with gnome, and I belive some of them could be happier with linux if using KDE.

Never forgetting, here in Brazil, the number one live-cd distro is Kurumin, that used KDE and Knopix as base, conectiva/mandriva uses KDE, if there where kubuntu live-cds floating around, probally more people would use linux here.

I wonder whether and how the Kubuntu idea can actually work out. Just take this issue for example:

- the next Kubuntu release comes out, ships (let's assume) amaroK 1.4
- since Ubuntu's sound is based on Gstreamer, Kubuntu defaults amaroK to the Gstreamer engine
- which is the Gstreamer 0.10 engine, the only one left (old gstreamer engine discontinued)
- however the Gstreamer 0.10 engine is very young and very immature, lots of features missing, leaks, crashes etc. etc.

And since people are not expected to know/care/find out about this engines mess, Kubuntu users disappointed by amaroK and go back to xmms/something else.

What I mean to illustrate by this is example is the following problem:

how does Kubuntu plan to ship a good KDE on top of an OS which is developed in more or less full indifference to KDE's needs?

Now I don't mean to speak evil of Ubuntu :-), but it's obvious that it's built with Gnome in mind, and that Kubuntu is just constantly trying to catch up.
Why not focus on an OS built either with a focus on KDE, or at least dedicated to all desktops' needs?

What is Ubuntu's stance on desktop neutrality? How is this meant to be implemented, and is it meant to be? I was curious to hear about this, but it seems that nothing is really news on this topic.

Actually, Kubuntu uses xine in dapper. There is a package called libxine-main1 that is used. Of course, it doesn't include support for much more than ogg with theora and vorbis. However, if you install another package (libxine-extracodecs) you get all this stuff back.

So yeah, Kubuntu is doing ok there, despite the distro being mostly focused on Gnome right now.

Glad to hear. As a matter of fact, I've suggested it on the kubuntu wiki some while ago. This means that the example happened to be off the spot. The problem as such still remains, though.

Don't get this wrong, I have nothing against a distro being focused on Gnome. My question is how a KDE implementation is expected to work well and especially realize the full potential of KDE on a system that doesn't help with this.

> I think you exaggerate the difference in dependencies between KDE and Gnome

That may be, since I'm certainly not an expert on the matter. What I can't be exaggerating is that:

1. Ubuntu tools are written with Gnome in mind and Kubuntu spends its time trying to reimplement them for KDE

2. Kubuntu can only get those Ubuntu users that are really willing to try something else, since KDE is neither the default desktop nor offered as a choice by the Ubuntu installer. And since all the hype says 'Ubuntu', and even Kubuntu says 'ubuntu', any 'spread kubuntu' battle is designed to be lost.

> the whole point of this Dot news post is that KDE is apparently
> becoming a first-class citizen to Canonical

I got that, but since 'first class citizen' is just a way of speaking and means nothing in itself, I was wondering what civil rights this citizenship brings with it. And except for Shipit (which is not really news), the story says nothing about the newly acquired rights.

So I'll sum up my two questions:

1. What does 'first-class citizen' mean, and how is being 'less default than others' compatible with first-class citizenship?

2. In what way is it reasonable to try to provide the best KDE implementation on a system that is not optimized for KDE? Is this just for the pure challenge of it?

> 1. What does 'first-class citizen' mean, and how is being 'less default
> than others' compatible with first-class citizenship?

The default on Kubuntun will be KDE, the default on Ubuntu will be GNOME, the default on Xubuntu will be XFCE, dead simple :-)

> 2. In what way is it reasonable to try to provide the best KDE
> implementation on a system that is not optimized for KDE? Is this just for
> the pure challenge of it?

Kubuntu will be optimized for KDE. The parts that are shared with GNOME will be optimized for both desktop, it's not all that hard to have both, KDE and GNOME running really fine on the same base system. Canonical will embed more KDE developers in their development process to assure that enough expertise for both desktops goes in.

> The default on Kubuntun will be KDE, the default on Ubuntu will be GNOME,
> the default on Xubuntu will be XFCE, dead simple :-)

:-)

Yes, and also dead newspeak, as long as the very name 'Kubuntu' says 'I am just a modification of something called Ubuntu'. Being the default on a non-default version is really the same as being 'less default than others', and this is precisely what I was saying. How can a first-class citizen not be equal to the other first-class citizens? Or do we count citizen classes from zero?

relationships are built; they don't appear magically in a day. they can be strengthened through cooperation and mutual discussion and subsequent efforts, and conversely they can be destroyed by preventing the same.

this is a step forward for the relationship between canonical and kde which only helps improve our stable of partners. given where we were with ubuntu when it first launched, a ton of progress has been made and the kubuntu team deserves all the credit for this particular set of developments imho. is it perfect right now? perhaps not, but perfection isn't the destination only the goal.

personally, i'm pretty confident that the user base will speak with its feet and that canonical will continue to improve their support of all the projects that are in demand and producing quality software.

meanwhile, Novell, Mandriva, Linspire, Xandros, Arch and on and on and on and on (i saw probably half a dozen kde-centric distros in brazil last month that i'd never even heard of) will continue doing their bit to grow the reach of kde and free software desktops.

I very much appreciate your friendly and cooperative attitude, and really I neither want to nor am able ( :-) ) to spoil KDE's collaboration with anybody.

> the kubuntu team deserves all the credit

Indeed. I don't blame the kubuntu team for anything.

> a ton of progress has been made

This is what I really feel compelled to challenge. The only progress I can see is that:

A. now I can bring in KDE on Ubuntu through the back door

and

B. now I can order Kubuntu per mail

And B. only happens to be the case because the LiveCD installer has been finished on time. Had the LiveCD installer not been finished, Canonical would have further shipped _two_ Ubuntu CD-ROMs and _zero_ Kubuntu CD-ROMs.

Which proves my point: Kubuntu and Ubuntu are not equal.

Now I am not mad at anybody for this, after all it's not my money (unfortunately :-) ).

But what I really, really cannot understand is why the community is so excited about Kubuntu. I can understand XFCE being excited about Xubuntu. XFCE is relatively small, and it gets exposure this way. KDE, on the other hand, seems to be twice as popular as all other DEs combined. And the KDE community is possibly the most numerous of all Free Software communities. Under these circumstances, it's not surprising at all that Canonical wants to talk. What's surprising is that KDE makes news out of something that is not even strictly speaking promises. Now I don't suggest arrogance, but why not focus the news on KDE-friendly distros (whichever they be)?

This at least until Kubuntu becomes independent (and gets a name, a release schedule and more than one employee of its own).

I think you should download dapper drake when it gets released, try it out.
It has really done great things for kde. It simplifies and ties kde closer together. A great desktop.

The only time where I saw that I was using ubuntu packages was when I installed firefox and it had by default some ubuntu bookmarks and no kubuntu bookmarks. Other than that, I've had none of the problems that you suggest should be there.

I can understand your scepticism and partly share your view - KDE really deserves a distribution that is build completely around KDE.

A better example is the CUPS trouble that plagued dapper during development. The problem is not that I would expect everything to work flawlessly in an unrealeased distribution, but the mere fact that an (at that time) incompatible unreleased CVS version of CUPS was introduced in Ubuntu because it goes well with GNOME and their tools - it improves the functionality. Unfortunaltey it breaks KDE functionality - a known issue, that under normal circumstances would have to be fixed within KDE before the next stable release of CUPS anyway. The matter is that Ubuntu's choice of CVS CUPS was based on what's good for Ubuntu/GNOME and not Kubuntu/KDE. So that's where I agree.

On the other hand you really should have a look at Kubuntu if you haven't already. The excitement in my oppinion is simply based on the great mix of usability and features that Kubuntu provides. In my book it really is the best KDE distro there is at this time - no matter if it builds upon a GNOME-centric core or not.

Why don't you just use Gentoo, SuSE or Mandrake then. Gentoo will give you complete control over what gets built.

I am sure the Knoppix team currently enjoy the exact opposite of what you are trying to say here.

I just think that this arguement is a little pointless. What I am more concerned about is what the Gnome team are doing to try to share technologies. We often hear about KDE making use of some technology that Gnome has been using but not the other way around.

As someone who actually uses Kubuntu (Breezy), I can say that it has a lot of promise, however...

The two distros have separate websites, which do link to each other (and edubuntu, but not Xubuntu... not yet anyway...) but Ubuntu is the more famous of the two, the Ubuntu forums see more action than the Kubuntu forums at http://www.kubuntuforums.net and htp://www.ubuntuforums.org has a Kubuntu section.

In the Ubuntu forums, they discuss solutions that mostly refer to the terminal, but if they refer to the GUI, they invariably refer to the GNOME GUI, with no explanation of the KDE equivalents, or even that solutions in the Ubuntu forums apply to the other *ubuntus in any extent (I've also searched for "equivalent commands" in the forum and found nothing, tbh I think there ought to be GNOME <==> KDE <==> XFCE commands sticky thread over there, detailing things that Synaptic == Adept, gedit == kwrite, gksudo == kdesu etc)

I was attracted to the Ubuntu name as I heard it was an easy distro to get into and good for Linux noobs like me and I sought out Kubuntu because all the Linux experiences I had with live CDs (Knoppix et al) were with KDE.

I do think that Kubuntu is an excellent distro and if the (K)Ubuntu team are going to reach out to KDE, then it can only benefit everyone for the KDE team to work with them and make Kubuntu a even better distro.

amaroK 1.4 is not going to ship with an immature engine. We've been there, got the t-shirt, learned our lesson. Likely amaroK 1.4 will only have Xine, Helix and NMM backends, at least in the first stable releases.

Heh, it's funny to look at the picture with Marks Shuttleworth above and see that the KDE gear on his chest have almost exactly the same colors as the LinuxTag logo at the table. Is this a coincidence? :-)

No, as a matter of fact I'm here looking for positive news. Really. And I'm glad when I find them, and usually don't complain when I don't.

However I did get a little carried away over this Ubuntu demagogy. This is not because I have something against Ubuntu, but it came on a bad background: I've been planning to do a system upgrade and researching for a good KDE distro, and this is what I found:

- SUSE's focus on KDE is vanishing (although it still employs some 12 developers and it wouldn't be fair not to notice this). Prefers Mono for business reasons and this hurts both KDE (which I want) and Java (which I still need)

- Mandriva no longer Mandrake, although it seems to employ a very dedicated developer. Tends to get obsolete and I unfortunately tend to be a bit of a freak when it comes to new software releases, especially KDE

- Linspire replaces perfectly good apps with alternatives of its own, just because it can. And for some (manipulative) reasons Click'n'Run doesn't call apps their names (at least it calls K3B 'CD Burner')

- a while ago I dropped Mepis for obsolescence and lack of configuration tools. I'll give the Kubuntu-based one a try, and actually this is my best hope for now :-(

- Yoper? I don't understand what's happening there. Does anyone?

- PC BSD didn't work when I tried it out. Might try the stable release, but since I need it on a laptop it's highly unlikely to work.

- I'll also give PCLinuxOS a try again, last time it was horribly unstable

- Kubuntu broken, neglected by its wider community, really a second-rate citizen apparently only meant to promote its bigger brother, pretending to be 'the KDE desktop' yet having to worry about whether it will be able to ship the new KDE release (because the Kubuntu release schedule actually depends upon a desktop environment that it doesn't even ship!)

Which means there's no good KDE distro left. And under these circumstances, it's considered big news that several months after saying 'first rate citizen', a distribution that wasn't even meant to ship KDE says 'first rate citizen' again! Where is dignity in this?

DISCLAIMER: don't read this as 'against ubuntu' or 'against gnome' - it's not. Instead, read it as 'please stop making a fuss out of obscure demagogical speeches that don't even contain clear promises, let alone facts'.

Well although I'm someone quite optimistic, I must agree with cw conclusion. I was waiting a lot from this famous linuxtag meeting and what I see right now really looks like marketing fuss. Apart from the Paris invitation I don't see anything concrete coming out of this meeting.

Kubuntu is (was ?) a big hope for all KDE people, a distribution really oriented towards KDE. But for the moment I'm really asking myself where it's heading ...

One more thing : from what I read in the last months news on the Dot, nearly each time a KDE booth was installed, Kubuntu CDs were given, which means Kubuntu is seen by most people (in the KDE sphere) as the KDE-oriented distribution of reference and is used to show real KDE possibilities. So shouldn't KDE developpers help more Kubuntu ones (well, one in fact :p ) polishing the distro (bugs, integration, ...) ? (open question)

PS : I'm also considering installing a new KDE-oriented distribution. I'm particularly considering OpenSuse and Kubuntu. Any other suggestion ?

The Mono implementation of .NET sucks big time, and Novell is setting itself up to be crushed by a lawsuit from Micro$oft. Novell would be much better off taking Google's example and betting on Python and KDE. PyKDE is already supported commercially, is used to build real-world tools (ie. Guidance), and is used in universities to teach object-oriented programming.

> I was waiting a lot from this famous linuxtag meeting and what I see right now really looks like marketing fuss. Apart from the Paris invitation I don't see anything concrete coming out of this meeting.

You only hear now what was said in the public meeting. Stay patient to see the actions of what was agreed on in the second non-public meeting.

I have it installed in a normally-non-supported laptop (PCChips A530), in my home desktop, and in my work desktop. The KDE thing is first-class -- I agree that breezy wasn't, but dapper is promising to be a really good release.

i personally run both kubuntu and suse. i have run other distros in the past on my desktop (including mandrake and red hat). with that background my personal take on kubuntu is this: the first release of kubuntu wasn't stellar, but it was promising. breezy was good enough to use, though it certainly had room to grow and lots of polish yet remained to do. when you have limited resources, that's to be expected. the real test is what happens on the next release.

i'm running dapper right now on my laptop and it's a -huge- improvement on the already passable breezy. the time and effort being put into it is pretty obvious release-over-release. the kubuntu channel on irc grows, the number of people i know using it and even working on kubuntu itself grows ......

so i'm not sure if your characterization is accurate. perhaps you got this impression from the start of the kubuntu project, but i think the kubuntu team really proved this possibility false with their consistent and continued efforts (kudos to them)

btw, i too was healthily skeptical of ubuntu when it started out. breaking into the distro game is really hard. i was hopeful but quietly skeptical of kubuntu when it started, too. but it's really hard to make final judgements on such projects that aren't obviously flawed in some way until they've had a couple years under their belt. perhaps you, like me, fall into the more conservative crowd when it comes to "new and improved" distros ;)

I am running kubuntu 5.10 and have to say that it is working really well. And KDE is going really well right here. That makes me skeptical about the conclusion that ubuntu is not KDE friendly.

It just got gnome as default desktop. If you download Kubuntu's package from Ubuntu you can install fully working KDE and then upgrade it

It was not hard for me a new user in the linux world to get into Kubuntu

And there are Stand alone Kubuntu CDs that have ubuntu's installer but that defaults to KDE instead of gnome. When Dapper gets into stable I am gonna download Kubuntu directly

Only issues I had with Kubuntu are the default appearance it got. I find kubuntu's splash screen hideous and had to replace it with KDE's I also had to modiffy a lot of things about the colors

. Starting with Dapper Drake, the next release of Kubuntu to be released at the beginning of June, Canonical will ship CD sets of Kubuntu in the same manner as it did with Ubuntu in the past. Artwork of the CD sets was shown to the attendants of the meeting.

> I am running kubuntu 5.10 and have to say that it is working really well.
> And KDE is going really well right here. That makes me skeptical about
> the conclusion that ubuntu is not KDE friendly.

The conclusion is that KDE is not currently a priority for Ubuntu, that Kubuntu is treated as 'nice to have' which is not 'first-class citizenship', and that nothing specifical has been said regarding how this problem will be fixed and whether it will be fixed.

"This still allows plenty of time (three weeks) from the GNOME string freeze to ours."

"Links and cross-references: GNOME 2.13.x/2.14 release schedule"

Needless to say, Kubuntu happens to be following the same release schedule. So what exactly is the point in being enthusiastic about Kubuntu as a KDE distro, if it doesn't even adjust it's releases to KDE? Is it that it started to work rather well lately? Well, Suse for instance has already worked well for ages.

Or is it just an irrational fear of being left aside? In that case just stop hyping Ubuntu until it doesn't leave KDE aside. I don't say 'attack', I just say stop giving it gratuitous praise.

Ubuntu choose gnome (probably, but not only) because they have a fixed release schedule. For them it was easy to adapt they own release schedule around gnome's. That's one huge point gnome has over kde: fixed release schedules. Please note that I prefere KDE over Gnome. Since KDE depends heavily on QT (which is a good thing) it's more difficult to them to make a fixed release schedule. KDE is like debian, they release when it's ready. my 2

It's too late for dapper to make huge changes in kubuntu. We'll have to wait another release to see if cannonical and mark take KDE/Kubuntu more into account in their releases. Time will tell. AFAIK I'm using dapper on a daily basis. It's very stable/polished and with shipit support it will get kde/kubuntu closer to more people, which is a great thing.

> so i'm not sure if your characterization is accurate.
> perhaps you got this impression from the start of the kubuntu project

As a matter of fact yes. I was quite enthusiastic about the first release, until I got fed with everything crashing around me and dumped it. Then I looked at the second release especially in order to see Adept, and although it wasn't as bad as the first try I suddenly noticed that I'm not impressed at all, especially by Adept (at that stage, however I hope it got better in the meanwhile).

If you say so, then I'll have a look at Dapper (and also at Mepis, especially for girlfriend). I don't question the fact that it might actually be good in spite of being treated as a stepchild. But I do think it's irrational for KDE to make waves around a distro that turns it into the 'other DE available on the other CD-ROM that no one has really heard about'.